Reposted from Indigenous Environmental Network at http://indigenous4motherearthrioplus20.org/
Indigenous march on Wednesday to deliver Kari-Oca declaration to world leaders in Rio
By Brenda Norrell
Photos by Ben Powless, Mohawk, IEN, Rio
Breaking news updated
Indigenous Peoples are gathered at the Kari-Oca II Earth Summit in
Rio de Janeiro, as the governments and corporate profiteers attempt to
place a price on nature as a commodity at the United Nations Conference
on Sustainability Rio+20.
The declaration of Kari-Oca II, signed by 500 Indigenous, will be
delivered to world leaders during a march from Kari-Oca encampment to
Rio+20, on Wednesday, July 20, 2012.
“We see the goals of UNCSD Rio+20, the ‘Green Economy,’ and its
premise that the world can only ‘save’ nature by commodifying its
life-giving and life-sustaining capacities as a continuation of the
colonialism that Indigenous Peoples and our Mother Earth have faced and
resisted for 520 years,” the declaration states.
“Indigenous activists and leaders defending their territories
continue to suffer repression, militarization, including assassination,
imprisonment, harassment and vilification as ‘terrorists.’ The violation
of our collective rights faces the same impunity. Forced relocation or
assimilation assault our future generations, cultures, languages,
spiritual ways and relationship to the earth, economically and
politically,” the declaration states.
Calling it a new wave of colonialism, Indigenous Peoples from around
the world are fighting to protect their rivers and forests, their air
and land from green scams and false climate solutions. They are also
remembering the Indigenous environmental activists from around the world
who have been murdered protecting their homelands from mining and
drilling.
Indigenous Peoples from the United States and Canada are focused on
halting the environmental nightmare of Alberta’s dirty tarsands, which
has already destroyed Cree homelands in Canada, and the Keystone
pipelines, which could pollute even more waterways and lands in the US.
Photo IEN’s Tom Goldtooth, Dakota Dine’, and Clayton Thomas Muller, Cree, at Kari-Oca II in Rio. Photo Ben Powless, Mohawk.
The
Indigenous Environmental Network is battling “carbon cowboys,” and
exposing the false climate solutions and scam carbon credits of the
carbon market, which allows the world’s worst polluters to continue
polluting.
Dirty coal more desperate on Navajo Nation
The worst polluters in the United States include the coal fired power
plants on the Navajo Nation, the latest target in a public relations
scheme using the carbon credit scam, with so-called green credits, as
part of the coal industry’s desperate scheme to keep the Navajo
Generating Station operating and polluting near the Grand Canyon.
Operated by the Salt River Project in Arizona, the Navajo Generating
Station is one of the dirtiest coal fired power plants in the United
States, and one of three coal fired power plants on the Navajo Nation.
The Navajo Nation is also targeted by water rights theft schemes of
Arizona senators and polluted by widespread oil and gas drilling and
radioactive tailings from Cold War uranium mines. The Navajo Nation in
New Mexico, and Lakota homelands in Nebraska and South Dakota, are both
now targeted with new uranium mining that could further contaminate
aquifers.
Rights of Nature
At the gatherings underway in Rio, Indigenous Peoples who gathered in
Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 2010, are carrying forward the Rights of
Nature, mandated by the World’s Peoples Conference on Climate Change and
the Rights of Mother Earth.
The Declaration of the Rights of Nature states: “The so-called
‘developed; countries must reduce their levels of over-consumption and
overexploitation of resources of the world in order to reestablish
harmony among human beings and with nature, allowing for the sustainable
development of all developing countries.” It also demands a world
climate court, redistribution of wealth, and the halt to carbon credits
and false climate solutions.
Carbon cowbows, the REDD hoax
Meanwhile, at the Kari-Oca II in Rio, Indigenous demand a halt to the
corporate destruction of their forests and rivers, land and air.
Indigenous Peoples denounced the Green Economy and REDD privatization
of nature, which is aimed at selling the air and destroying the future.
Indigenous Peoples warn of the REDD scam, which constitutes a worldwide land grab and gigantesque carbon offset scam.
REDD+ is an UN-promoted false solution to climate change and the
pillar of the Green Economy. Officially, REDD+ stands for Reducing
Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation.
Tom Goldtooth (Dakota/Dine´), Director of Indigenous Environmental
Network, said that “REDD+ really means Reaping profits from Evictions,
land grabs, Deforestation and Destruction of biodiversity.”
Just as Chief Seattle over a hundred years ago asked, “How can you
sell the air?,” Marlon Santi of the Ecuadorian Amazon, condemns carbon
trading and REDD+ and asks, “How can you sell Mother Earth and Father
Sky?”
But apparently someone is trying, as the recently inaugurated Bolsa
Verde do Rio de Janeiro (BVRio), a Brazilian stockmarket for forest
carbon credits, shows.
Berenice Sanchez of the Nahua People of Mexico said, “Not only does
REDD+ corrupt the Sacred and fuel financial speculation, it also serves
as greenwash for extractive industries like Shell and Rio Tinto.”
Indigenous Peoples said that REDD+ is a “new wave of colonialism.”
From Peru to Papua New Guinea, carbon cowboys are running amok trying
to rip off native communities and grab the forests of the world, 80
percent of which are found in Indigenous Peoples´ lands and territories.
Marife Macalanda of the Asia Pacific Indigenous Youth Network said,
“The environmental crisis is getting worse because of capitalists´ false
solutions such as REDD+. The real solution to the climate crisis
affecting the people of the world, especially Indigenous Peoples, is to
protect Mother Earth, uphold social justice and respect the Indigenous
Peoples’ decisions and right to say no.”
The first Kari-Oca summit in Rio was held in 1992, before the United
Nations Conference on Environment and Development. More than 700
Indigenous leaders signed the Indigenous Peoples Earth Charter.
Petition to US Hillary Clinton
The Grassroots Global Justice Alliance said, “The global 1% is
converging in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil this June at the Rio+20 United
Nations Conference on Sustainable Development to unveil their “Green
Economy” strategy—but we know that just calling something ‘green’
doesn’t mean it’s good for people or for the planet. The Rio+20
Conference is a key moment when world government have an opportunity to
either act to protect our future, or continue on the same failed
strategies that are threatening our future.”
Photo: Clayton Thomas Muller, Cree, signs Declaration at Kari-Oca II. Photo Ben Powless.
“The 99% are also mobilizing to Brazil this June. Grassroots Global
Justice and other grassroots groups in the Climate Justice Alignment
will join thousands of people from social movements around the world
converging in Rio to demand an end to profit-driven dirty energy
industries like oil drilling and pipelines, market-based strategies like
carbon-trading and forest exploitation, and extreme energy like fossil
fuels and incinerators.”
The alliance is gathering signatures to be sent to US Rio+20 Lead
Negotiator John Matuszak, and to the US State Department’s Office of
Correspondence and Records who tracks and documents comments for US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:
To US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and US Rio+20 Lead Negotiator John Matuszak, At the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable
Development, I urge you to reject the false solutions of the “Green
Economy” and instead invest in solutions to the root causes of the
ecological and economic crises that put our communities to work, cool
the planet, and transition environmental control back to local
economies.
In particular, I urge you to: Stop destructive climate projects
and unsustainable energy developments including the Canadian Tar Sands,
the proposed TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline, and proposed oil drilling
in the off-shore Outer Continental Shelf areas of the Beaufort and
Chukchi Seas of Alaska.
Reject REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest
Degradation) and other carbon offset models as the pillar of the Green
Economy that furthers the privatization of Nature and displaces
indigenous communities.
End the Era of Extreme Energy: Create just transition pathways
out of resource and carbon-intensive industries such as fossil fuels,
waste incineration, biomass energy, nuclear power, and industrial
agriculture.
Commit to reducing emissions by 90% from 1990 levels by 2050.
Commit to full-scale investment in inclusive Zero Waste systems, with a transition goal for 2040.
–Sign the Petition at Grassroots Global Justice Alliance
Phone contacts at Kari-Oca II in Rio:
Berenice Sánchez, ixachitlanti@gmail.com (Spanish) +52 044 55 23 39 39 28
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